A syllable is a unit of pronunciation having a vowel sound and usually one or more consonant sounds. Syllables give words their rhythm and make poetry possible.
Saying an unfamiliar word syllable by syllable may help, although an understanding of prefixes and suffixes is essential for proper pronunciation.
A word may have only one syllable or many:
air (1 syllable)
afar (2 syllables)
ambush (2 syllables)
ambushed (3 syllables)
absolute (3 syllables)
absolutely (4 syllables)
avocation (4 syllables)
A prefix may have more than one syllable.
anti— an + ti (2 syllables)
A suffix may have more than one syllable.
─ally al + ly (2 syllables)
A root word may have more than one syllable, as well as a prefix and a suffix, making up a long word.
septic sep + tic (2 syllables)
antiseptically an + ti + sep + tic + al + ly (6 syllables)
Cover page of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, published in 1667, photo courtesy of Wikipedia > Long S.
History of the letter S
The letter S originated with the Semitic letter shin, meaning “teeth” or “sharp”, perhaps inspired by the Egyptian hieroglyph for “tusk”. The symbol for shin looks somewhat like a W, with an upper dot or tittle to distinguish the s-sound from the sh-sound.
The Greeks turned the symbol on its side, to create the letter sigma (Σ, σ) for the s-sound.
Prior to 1500s, the lower-case letter s in Roman print was a “long s” similar to a lower-case f or a tusk. In medieval hand, the words look a little strange to us.
bleff = bless
bleffedneff = blessedness
When printing came into use after the mid-1400s, a rounded s was often placed at the end of words.
blefs = bless
bleffednefs = blessedness
To distinguish between the letters f and long s, the rounded s form that we know today began to be used everywhere, from the mid-1700s to early-1800s.
blessedness
The long s remained as a symbol for shillings in Britain, although it morphed into a slash.
£6/10 (six pounds, 10 shillings)
Note: This blog post is an excerpt from a book, “English Manual: Letter by Letter,” to be published in 2016.
The Mute Swan is a species introduced to North America. This male is patrolling a pond in Woodbine Park, Toronto.
The sound of S
The sound of S is generally a sibilant or hiss, similar to a soft C.
salmon
silly
situations
super
Exception
Sometimes the letter s takes on the sound of sh.
measure
sugar
Exception
Sometimes the letter s takes on the sound of z. Words ending in —ise, —ize, and —yse or —yze have the same zee sound. The following words are always spelled with an —ise ending.
advise
arise
clockwise
exercise
revise
Note
Some words are invariably spelled with —se, some with —ze. There are others where the —se ending is preferred in the UK, and the —ze ending in the USA. Canadian English is variable. Use only one dictionary to maintain consistency in the way you spell these words.
agonise [UK]; agonize [US and Oxford English Dictionary]
analyse [UK]; analyze [US]
catalyse [UK]; catalyze [US]
dialyse [UK]; dialyze [US]
paralyse [UK]; paralyze [US]
standardise [UK]; standardize [US and OED]
Special reading assignment
Horse seven from race six was scratched.
Cirrus clouds scudded across the sky.
Note
If you like swans, you may like this book, available on Amazon Kindle:
This rock cut is located on Highway 7 west of Ottawa, Ontario.
R is for rhyme and rhyme scheme
A rhyme is the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often in the final syllables of the final words in lines of poetry or song. Rhyme is also a verb, used even to describe how someone made an unintentionally poetic statement.
Rhyme is a poetic device. One common type of poetry features rhyming couplets.
All the stream that’s roaring by
Came out of a needle’s eye;
Things unborn, things that are gone,
From needle’s eye still goad it on.
— “A Needle’s Eye,” William Butler Yeats
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of the rhymes ending the lines of a poem or song. In English, different rhyme schemes have names, e.g., a limerick is AABBA.
Here is another example of rhyming couplets, using letters to mark the different rhymes.
He with body waged a fight, A
But body won; it walks upright. A
Then he struggled with the heart; B
Innocence and peace depart. B
Then he struggled with the mind; C
His proud heart he left behind. C
Now his wars on God begin; D
At stroke of midnight God shall win. D
— “The Four Ages of Man,” William Butler Yeats
Rhyming Mnemonic
Rhymes are also used as a mnemonic to aid memorization.
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Save February, with twenty-eight days clear,
And twenty-nine each leap year.
— Anonymous
R is for rhythm
Rhythm is the regular beat of sounds and silence in speech, prose, poetry, or music. It is as natural as walking and breathing; our hearts beat in a rhythm. In music, the upbeat and downbeat correspond to the metre in poetry, which is measured in feet, e.g. da DUM, which is an iamb.
Iambic pentameter is a common rhythm in poetry, consisting of five iambs per line.
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
(Act 3, Scene 1)
—“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare
Exercises
Do you have a favourite poem? What is its rhyme scheme and rhythm?
Do you know any mnemonics used as memory aids? Do they rhyme?
Special reading assignment
Rock cuts are a feature of Canadian landscape, especially in the north.
Rest assured, Rosemary has rated the recipe for roasted radishes.
Toronto, Canada, has a large population of raccoons. Sometimes they get into mischief.
Prefixes
re— stands for “again” or “go back”. Sometimes, especially when the root word begins with R or RE, there is a hyphen. Also, if you make up a word starting with RE, you ought to use a hyphen.
react
redo
regrow
re-release
re-roof
rerun
restore
retry
Note that a hyphen may indicate a different meaning.
redress vs re-dress
reform vs re-form
rhodo— means “red” or “rosy”.
rhodonite
rhododendron
radio— indicates a relationship with radio or radiation.
radioactive
radiowave
Suffixes
—er creates an adjective or adverb indicating more, by comparison.
bigger
faster
higher
stronger
—er designates someone (or something) who does or is something.
banker
foreigner
New Brunswicker
swimmer
2-wheeler
cutter
—re is sometimes preferred over the more common —er, most often in words that originate from French or Latin. This is one place where spelling variations occur, especially in the USA.
chevre [from French] (cheese)
goitre, goiter [US]
litre, liter [US]
louvre, louver
metre, meter [US]
sabre, saber [US]
theatre, theater [US]
—ry, —ery designate a place for something, a class of something, a state or condition of something, or a quality or characteristic of something or someone.
bakery, tannery
finery, mastery
cheery, misery, slavery
snobbery, watery
Exercises
Find a paragraph in a newspaper or online and look for all the words containing the letter R. How many of them contain a prefix or suffix beginning with R? What is the root of these words? Does the root make sense on its own?
Write down as many verbs as you can think of. Place the prefix re— in front. Do the verbs still make sense? Try to use them in a sentence.
Special reading assignment
Raccoons are native to North America but have spread around the world.
Raccoons do not make good pets. Do you know anyone who has tried to make a pet of one? What happened?
Note: This blog post is an excerpt from a book, “English Manual: Letter by Letter,” to be published in the summer of 2015.
Bush roses with simple flowers are close to Shakespeare’s “eglantine.”
The sounds of R
In English, the letter R has two sounds: an “are” sound, the same as the name of the letter; and an “rr” sound, a short, vowel-less noise. In some languages (e.g., Spanish) the letter R has a third sound, a trill. In Canada this trill is featured in a funny Tim Horton’s promotional ad,
Rrroll up the rrrim to win!
Silent Rs
The letter R may be silent in some dialects (e.g., Boston (US) and some British), where the R is pronounced only if a vowel follows it.
Silent Rs before a consonant (dialect only)
fork
garden
party
Silent Rs at the end of a word, except when the next word begins with a vowel (dialect only)
butter
finger
hear
mother
Note: Students learning English ought to pronounce these Rs.
Fun R words
raggamuffin
rattlesnake
rearrange
reboot
re-record
restraint
revenue
reward
reword
right-of-way
Special reading assignment
’Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.
Raspberries are as well-received as roses in midsummer.
These lovely quails are marching across a planter.
Prefixes
quad—, quadr—, quadri— denote four of something, or a square.
quadrangle
quadrennium
quadrilateral
quadruped
quant— denotes a number of something or a measurement.
quantity
quantum
quart— denotes a fourth of something.
quarter
quartet (or quartette)
Exception:
The mineral quartz has a trigonal crystal form. The name is of Slavic origin.
quasi— means “as if” in Latin, but in English it now implies something that looks OK but is not quite right; “somewhat” or “almost.”
quasi-democratic
quasi-scientific
quasi-stellar object (a quasar)
quin— denotes the number five.
quinary
quincentenary (500th anniversary)
quintet
quintuplets
Suffixes
—que in Latin words means “and”, but English words with this ending are usually (but not always) derived from French. The original Latin ending may have been —icus or
—icare.
antique
appliqué
communiqué
grotesque [from Italian]
opaque
plaque [from Dutch]
Exercises
Can you identify additional words to add to the lists of prefixes and suffixes?
Use the words in sentences to clarify their meanings.
Special reading assignment
Quail belong to the same family as partridges and pheasants.
Quail eggs were sent to the Mir space station in 1990, where they were incubated and successfully hatched.
“Q, q”
Q was once a little quail,
Quaily
Faily
Daily
Quaily
Stumpy-taily
Little Quail!
— Edward Lear, The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse
Note: This blog post is an excerpt from a book, “English Manual: Letter by Letter,” to be published in the summer of 2015.
In the very centre of a Queen Anne’s Lace flower is one tiny purple floret.
The sounds of Q
The letter Q, which by itself has the sound of K or a hard C, is in English almost never found by itself, but rather as the digraph, QU. It may be better to think of it as a short K sound followed by a diphthong: UA, UE, UI, or UO.
quarter
quest
quit
quorum
Occasionally, a word with QU is pronounced as a K, without a following diphthong.
quay (pronounced “kee” and formerly spelt kay or key. These older spellings are still used in some instances, e.g., the Florida Keys.)
quoit
clique
When you understand the origins of letters, you understand English spelling.
Historically, the letter Q came by way of the Phoenicians (they had two K sounds, one a guttural Qof that does not exist in English). The Greeks took it over as qoppa or koppa, but dropped it, as their language did not use that sound. The Etruscans had three K sounds, gamma, kappa, and koppa, this last letter always used before u or o.
The Romans took their alphabet from the Etruscans, but Latin had only one K sound. They dropped kappa and finally used gamma as the letter C and koppa as the letter Q.
Latin needed a representative for the sound “kw” common to the language. The Romans used the letter Q followed by a V (as the letter U hadn’t been invented as yet).
In Old English, the “kw” sound was represented by CW. In their alphabet, “queen” would have been spelled, “cwen”.
The French continued with the Latin QV. When the Normans conquered England, French spelling came to be preferred. CW became QV, and then QU when the letter U was introduced as a vowel. The Norman influence complicated English spelling. Most words containing QU are derived from French and Latin.
The English language didn’t really need QU, as the old CW would have done.
queen (from Old English cwen)
quench (in Anglo-Saxon, cwencan)
bequeath (in Anglo-Saxon, bicweoan)
Where QU is pronounced as K, a simple K or C would have sufficed. The following words are derived from French. You may see them spelled with a K on signs or in social media.
antique
boutique
critique
technique
unique
English imports words from other languages, including Arabic. These words may be transcribed from the Arabic alphabet in different ways. The guttural K sound (the Arabic letter qaf) is sometimes transcribed as a lonely Q without a U and is still understandable in English. In the following list, the second instance is the preferred spelling.
burqa or burka or burkha
faqir or fakir
qabab or kebab or kabob
qat or khat or gat
Similarly, some Chinese words have been transcribed into English in different ways.
qi or chi or ki
qigong or chi gong or ki gong
Special reading assignment
Queen Anne’s Lace: a common roadside weed or a beautiful wild flower?
English Manual: Letter by Letter 